Scientists say that they have teleported an atom across a room for the first time.
Teleporting is when something is taken apart and sent to another place without any physical contact.
In the past, scientists have done this to laser light, but this is the first time something solid has been teleported from one place to another.
Although this does not mean that we can do the same with humans, it could revolutionise technology of the future.

Even if this technology would not work for humans in the future.. I guess it will work for normal "materials".. on this way it would be very easy to suply space ships from earth, or to "beam" fuel to engines etc.. even if the suply is somewhere on the other side of the galaxy..

bbc.. > This development is a long way from the transporters used by Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Kirk in the famous Star Trek TV series. lol
But still.. with this technology.. it seems.. ONE DAY.. the ships in Star Trek could be made reality

It relies on a strange behaviour that exists at the atomic scale known as "entanglement", whereby two particles can have related properties even when they are far apart. Einstein called it a "spooky action".

aahh, what did I start. Sigurds started testing out the teleporter and now there's more of them!!!

in time.. they will remember this as.. the second dark ages.. or just "Sigurd Ages" on every street corner a sigurd hahahaha
1 person 1 vote sigurd 95135421 votes for... AGAIN the same.. 99% votes for... "The Sigurd party" :p humm.. The Next war on terror... "The war on sigurd"

I guess they better use this technology to make some food for poor people and nations.. to make the development of objects cheaper etc etc...
Computers faster... and the spaceships faster, larger, better, ... But anyway.. that's for an other 20 year or so in the future ? if it isn't... 100 years or so... It really doesn't seem to be easy..

In this issue two groups report 'deterministic' teleportation, involving atoms (trapped 40Ca+ ions in one case, and 9Be+ in the other), such that the outcome is predictable. The quantum identity of one atom (not the atom itself) is destroyed by quantum measurement, and that identity is reconstructed on the paired atom. This achievement is an important step towards quantum computing and telecommunications.

So this is a transfer of states and not matter. So there's no "matter teleportation" as such ... not yet anyway. You still need something at point B to imprint the (quantum) identity of the item at point A.Here is the full abstract (summary) for one of the papers ... just read the first line.

Teleportation of a quantum state encompasses the complete transfer of information from one particle to another. The complete specification of the quantum state of a system generally requires an infinite amount of information, even for simple two-level systems (qubits). Moreover, the principles of quantum mechanics dictate that any measurement on a system immediately alters its state, while yielding at most one bit of information. The transfer of a state from one system to another (by performing measurements on the first and operations on the second) might therefore appear impossible. However, it has been shown that the entangling properties of quantum mechanics, in combination with classical communication, allow quantum-state teleportation to be performed. Teleportation using pairs of entangled photons has been demonstrated, but such techniques are probabilistic, requiring post-selection of measured photons. Here, we report deterministic quantum-state teleportation between a pair of trapped calcium ions. Following closely the original proposal, we create a highly entangled pair of ions and perform a complete Bell-state measurement involving one ion from this pair and a third source ion. State reconstruction conditioned on this measurement is then performed on the other half of the entangled pair. The measured fidelity is 75%, demonstrating unequivocally the quantum nature of the process.

Yeah I saw it before in the article but didn't wanted to spoil the fun..
And still.. you can make a copy of someone with materials from the local side So as example... you have some material reservers.. and on a spaceship (but also on earth) you could say.. "make a café from it.... or a cocacola.. or some other food.. or a chair;. etc etc" or am I wrong ?

But anyway.. if I read right.. we can use this technology to communicate faster as light.. with mars as example.. because the data (states) of the 2 parts change instantly... or do they need to be reconnected after each state change ?

It's true that this isn't anything like the transporter of Star Trek fame yet, It's only being considered in making very fast computers (I like it ). It is interesting how far the technology has come already though.

When the Australian team first teleported light mid 2002 people were saying it's going to take ages until atoms are teleported and look now! Not bad when think that most projects run behind schedule.

It may take a VERY long time before we see anything of it, if we're all still alive but you can never know what will be possible in just ten years let alone in a few decades.

Last edited by Nova on Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah I saw it before in the article but didn't wanted to spoil the fun..And still.. you can make a copy of someone with materials from the local side So as example... you have some material reservers.. and on a spaceship (but also on earth) you could say.. "make a café from it.... or a cocacola.. or some other food.. or a chair;. etc etc" or am I wrong ?

Yeah, like the microwave that can make any kind of food you want, that was on star-trek wasn't it? Now THAT would be cool ...

Sigurd wrote:

But anyway.. if I read right.. we can use this technology to communicate faster as light.. with mars as example.. because the data (states) of the 2 parts change instantly... or do they need to be reconnected after each state change ?

That's the general gist of the program, although I have no idea if they can "flip" back the exchange of states.

These days the scientist around Prof. Zeilinger (Vienna) succeeded in teleporting the properties of a photon across the Donau.

This means that quantum mechanics in principle are practically usable for communication purposes. Zeilinger and his team have had nearly no problems - they repeated the teleportation 2 million times in a second or in similar few time successfully.

Not long ago they successfully used quantum mechanics to establish a non-spyable connection between the public administration's bureau and a bank to send an order to pay (german term "Überweisung").

Addtionaly a NIAC study it is worked out that quantum mechanics may be of great advantage for satellites (and other space activities and missions too I think; please refer to the NIAC site).

So all in all this topic may change space travel sooner than expected - the experiment crossing the Donau didn't require any apparatus not being used in the labors I suppose.

A little bit more time it will take this technique to be used in interplanetary probes. But if this time is reached interplanetary communications not only won't require huge antennas no longer - the time required to communicate to Mars or Saturn for example would be reduced from hours or one day down to a few moments.